Some Crochet Gifts and Knitted Hats and a quick trip to England!

Welcome back, my dear Friends,

December Greetings to you all! Hasn't time gone quickly!!! Thanks for your kind responses to my last post!

Finally time for a quick update!

We went for a quick trip this weekend to England, leaving in the very early hours of Saturday, arriving there mid morning and arriving back here in Belgium last night! A very short trip indeed!


Knitted Hats

First of all, I want to share my latest little knits with you:

Here are 2 more knitted hats I made during the last 2 weeks, using 2 different stitch patterns. I knit all my hats in the round, casting on with 4mm needles for the rib and then 5.5mm needles for the body of the hat. For these two hats I used shaping to create a rounder shape, the previous 2 hats were knit in a cylindrical shape and then sewn together.

(I already gave the Grey-Green Hat to my best friend as an early Christmas gift when I visited her on Sunday morning. She put it on and loved it straight away!)

2 Cloche Style knitted hats

All 4 knitted hats that I made in the last month (Rico Tasai yarn)

Making Crochet Mini Baskets

Before leaving for England, I wanted to make some little crochet baskets for gifts. Here you can see what was going on Friday, 28.11.14:

Crochet Squares for making a Mini Basket

The finished Crochet Mini Basket (but without lining)!

Work in progress!

I found the pattern for these pretty baskets here: weblink - please check it out!

I had actually saved the link for a while, and it seemed a great opportunity to make some for Christmas! But of course, they would make great gifts all year round. They are pretty easy to make, and you could adapt the pattern in different ways.

For example, I made some versions where the side panels are different from each other, using 2 contrasting colours. Likewise, you could make them larger or smaller!

Apart from crochet, you will need some very basic sewing skills, and a sewing machine would come in very handy, especially if you want to make a whole batch of these! The lining was added to the basket and then handsewn inside. (Of course it would be possible to make the Mini Basket without lining!)

Inner Cotton lining made especially for the Crochet Baskets

29.11.14 Breakfast at Costa's in England! ;)

01.12.14  Here are 3 of the completed Mini Baskets together with the new Phone Cosy

  


A festive little Star Garland

On Saturday we went to visit one of my daughters. I made her a Star Garland in her favourite colours to match her colour scheme! She was very happy with it.

Purple White Star Garland I made for my Daughter

Stars in the Window

My Ombre Crochet Phone Cosy

I got a new mobile phone whilst in England (I had the previous one for a few years). So on the car journey back to Belgium I set about making a custom Phone Cosy for it, to protect the phone. I had never made one before, and I didn't have a pattern either, but this was a great occasion to use my own designing skills!

I decided I wanted a sort of colourful Ombre effect and I used some of the Scheepjeswol Stone Washed yarn that I had taken along to make the Crochet Baskets and also the Star Garland.

I crocheted this in the round in one go, then adding the envelope flap which I sewed to the sides. It fits quite snug without being too tight and is easy to slide in/out of the cosy, even using one hand only. The flap prevents the phone from falling out accidentally. I find it both functional and pretty!

Front

Back

My new Crochet Ombre Phone Cosy - easy to retrieve the Phone

My Harlequin Blanket

A quick glimpse on the current progress - the blanket is getting bigger and quite heavy by now:

29.11.14 Harlequin Blanket - latest progress!

And here is something that made me smile (I mentioned it in my last post) - this time I managed to grab the camera and take a quick photo of Jasper settling himself onto my Harlequin Blanket when I started to work on it! This seems to be his way of saying, thanks for making me such a squishy blanket!!! ;)

Jasper stakes his claim on the blanket!!!

About using Tags

For my latest followers here is a little tip: I add tags to each post. This means you will be able to search for a specific tag (there is a search box on the right hand side, together with a 'cloud' of tags (each tag name is 'clickable' and will come up with posts that mention that specific tag name). So for example, you can find more about the Star Garland in a previous post which includes a link to the pattern. Give it a try!

...and a question to you fellow bloggers:

I do want to learn more things all the time, so I'm currently wondering how I can add a widget that lets me add a 'Pin button' to each photo of mine here on my blog (so anybody could add it to their PINTEREST boards) and also a sort of general 'add this to Pinterest' button (i.e. a blog post). I am completely self taught when it comes to blogging and I am still learning as I go along! This is one feature that I would like to be able to use, but so far I have not quite figured it out how to do this!

I recently joined Pinterest just so I can save some visual ideas. I just thought it would be nice for my followers to add any of my images to their collection, if they wanted to.

I am using Blogger. If you have successfully managed to do this to your own blog, then please would you contact me by email (and do not fill up the comment box with complicated instructions below), that way I would be able to email you back if I got a further question, if that is ok with you?
Please kindly contact me here: scutagal (at) yahoo <dot> co <dot> uk


Well, I do hope you enjoyed reading this latest post! Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to add your comments below, I love hearing from you all. Let me know what you liked best!

Happy December!!!!